Litecoin (LTC) – Buy, Wallets, Price and Full Review

Everything You Need to Know About the Popular Cryptocurrency

Litecoin (LTC) is a digital currency based on blockchain technology, used as a means of transferring value and considered the little brother of Bitcoin. It was introduced to the world in October 2011 by former Google employee Charlie Lee. Litecoin is an open-source code currency based on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network and is known as one of the oldest cryptocurrencies in the digital currency market.

Litecoin Price and Amount of Coins In Circulation

The maximum amount of Litecoin coins is 84 million. As of this writing, approximately 61 million coins are in circulation. Similar to Bitcoin, Litecoin’s economic model rewards miners with newly created coins. Currently, the reward is 25 Litecoins per block. As with Bitcoin, Litecoin also undergoes a halving celebration, where every 800,000 blocks (approximately every 4 years) the reward is cut in half. This means that on August 10th, 2023, the reward will be reduced from 12.5 to 6.25 Litecoins per block. It is important to note that Litecoin, like Bitcoin, is also divided into 100 million units called Photons.

Who is behind the Litecoin currency?

Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin Foundation, a non-profit organization registered in Singapore, is dedicated to improving the Litecoin protocol. The organization is led by Charlie, but it also includes other leading developers from the blockchain industry who contribute either voluntarily or by payment (through donations), such as Adrian Gallagher and Loshan T. Additionally, Litecoin Core is another group of developers who work on improving the client. In the future, we can expect many surprises from Litecoin, such as anonymous transactions and Schnorr signatures.

Litecoin is similar in many ways to Bitcoin, and is even considered the ‘little brother’ of the Bitcoin community. The reason for this is quite clear – Litecoin’s code was derived from Bitcoin’s code, with improvements or changes that Charlie saw fit to add.

It is important to emphasize at this point that Charlie Lee is an enthusiastic supporter of Bitcoin, and created Litecoin to ‘complement’ and work together with Bitcoin – not to compete with it. The idea is that in the eyes of Charlie and many in the crypto community, Bitcoin is meant to be a store of value, like gold, while Litecoin is designed to complement it by enabling faster transactions.

How does Litecoin currency work?

Litecoin is also based on the Proof of Work algorithm, but with a significant difference. While Bitcoin is based on the SHA-256 algorithm, which is designed for powerful computing resources and even specialized chips for mining, Litecoin is based on the Scrypt algorithm. This algorithm relies on the computer’s memory rather than necessarily its processors, and thus (according to Charlie’s claim) suppresses the concentration that is created around the Bitcoin mining world.

In the Bitcoin blockchain, a block is created every 10 minutes, while in the Litecoin blockchain, it is every 2.5 minutes. The goal behind this is to enable a higher and faster volume of transactions. The meaning behind a higher volume of transactions is reflected especially in our wallets – the more the blockchain can handle, the lower the fee we will need to pay.

Another issue is the consensus protocol. In Bitcoin, a consensus of 95% of the community (developers, users, and miners) is required for any proposed change or improvement. In Litecoin, however, the consensus threshold is only 75%. The meaning of this is twofold – on the one hand, it makes it easier to implement improvements and gain support. On the other hand, it reduces the strength of the protocol’s distribution.

Advantages and disadvantages of Litecoin currency

Advantages:

SegWit – In May 2017, Litecoin became the first currency to implement SegWit (Segregated Witnesses) in its protocol. In direct translation, SegWit means separating signatures. When a transaction is made on the blockchain, each user must sign the transfer using their private key. The signatures, as it turned out over the years, accounted for a significant portion of the block size – up to 60% of the block sometimes. By separating the signatures from the block size, it is possible to significantly increase the block size (realistically) without the need for a hard fork and create much more space for transactions themselves. Lightning Network – The implementation of SegWit also allowed Litecoin developers to incorporate the technological improvement called Lightning Network. In essence, this network provides an off-chain solution (meaning, external to the blockchain) that helps speed up transactions, reduce fees, and cope more effectively with scalability issues. The following video explains the technology in detail.

Disadvantages:

One of the main disadvantages of Litecoin is that some people claim that development has stopped.

In addition, Litecoin is a kind of experimental network for Bitcoin, its big brother. Before implementing technological improvements in Bitcoin, they are usually tested on Litecoin (in most cases).

Recommended Litecoin wallet:

Litecoin is digital currency, which means there is a wide variety of wallets available for it. These are the recommended wallets:
(Top Recommended Digital Currency Wallets for Storing Bitcoin and Ethereum Cryptocurrencies – Click Here)

1)Hardware wallets – the most recommended wallets. A hardware wallet is an external hard drive that is currently the safest way to hold digital coins.

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